In August 2007, the head coach of Russia’s youth national team on swimming Sergey Konov will arrive in Ashgabat to train young Turkmen swimmers and share experience with the Turkmen colleagues during a week. The news was announced at the meeting of the State Committee for Tourism and Sports of Turkmenistan. The Russian trainer was invited to Turkmenistan through the International Olympic Committee with a view to create the reserves of the Olympic national team and to establish cooperation with leading world powers in sports”.

As the Ashgabat correspondent of Turkmenistan.ru reports, the meeting focused on the preparation of Turkmen sportsmen to the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to be held in Beijing and the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver (Canada) and 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi (Russia).

As for the Beijing Olympic Games, the participants defined the list of potential candidates for the Olympic team of Turkmenistan in judo, Greco-Roman and free style wrestling, box, weightlifting, swimming, shooting, beach volleyball. "The exact list of the Turkmen team for the 2008 Olympics will be defined depending on how well they perform in the forthcoming qualifiers for the Olympic games”, the speakers said.

As it was pointed out during the meeting, the Turkmen team may start participating in winter Olympics not in Sochi but in Vancouver Olympic Games. As is known, this year Turkmenistan made its debut in the Winter Asian Games in Chinese Chanchun. 17 year-old skater Batyr Mamedov represented Turkmenistan in the 2007 Winter Asian Games.